Ex-Anniston Publisher Resigns over Spanking Allegations

What the hell?

‘You're being a bad girl:' News exec spanks a female reporter to ‘calm her down’

 

The page, she is not found.

 

I read this the other day ... It's from the 1970s, but still .. ....
And his apology falls a little short.

 

This link should work: Alabama newspaper executive accused of spanking female employees resigns

I would hope that pulling a grown woman from her chair and spanking her 18 times with a pica pole in front of the entire newsroom would've been frowned upon in any decade, but unfortunately, I know better now.

 

As a point of fact, it wasn't in front of the entire newsroom, it was on a Saturday morning when there was only one other person in the building. Why that guy didn't intervene I can't say, but I would surmise it's because he himself was a young reporter who was worried about losing his job if he physically confronted the editor/publisher. Labor relations being what they were in Alabama in the mid-1970s, I can't imagine he'd have been able to win any grievance to get his job back.

***

I worked at Anniston for several years more than a decade ago, but I only had personal interactions with Ayers maybe 4 or 5 times (he was only publisher by that time and his office was on the other side of the building, so he used a different entrance/exit than the newsroom employees). I never heard any stories about his predilections, and he didn't strike me as any different than any other (then) 70-year-old man who'd been groomed to wear a suit and attend Rotary Club meetings his whole life.

But when rumors of this story started to leak out about a month ago (after Eddie Burkhalter resigned), I called a buddy of mine who worked at the Star a lot longer than I did (and also grew up in and still lives in the area, though he no longer works there). I asked him if he'd heard about rumors that Ayers would be "the next one to go down due to sexual misconduct allegations," and he said "no, but it wouldn't surprise me. There's been stories of him having a thing for spanking women going around for years." (I hadn't specifically mentioned spanking).

So yeah, people know about it ...

 

Are labor relations any better in Alabama now?

 

Probably worse, to be honest, since few newspapers are union shops anymore. Not sure if Anniston was back then, or ever was.

 

Point taken.

Still, that's not just sexual harassment - that's a slam-dunk case of assault.